The recycling of paper, and other materials derived from woodpulp, has been steadily increasing in volume creating a need for new equipment and methods of processing waste paper. While recycling waste paper is not a new idea, the benefits and attitudes toward recycling have dramatically increased in recent years. There has been, and continues to be, an increasing amount of waste paper being recycled. In order to reduce the costs and increase the efficiency of recycling this expanding amount of waste paper, new machines and methods are being developed where none existed before.
The use of certain types of re-pulping machinery requires that the banding holding a bale of wastepaper together be removed before processing begins. When bales of waste paper are brought into a recycling facility which uses such machinery, the wire or bands (usually metal) holding the bale together must be cut and removed from around the bales before the waste paper can enter the re-pulper. The re-pulping machinery is sensitive to the introduction of banding material, and will generally break down if any of the wire or banding material is mixed in with the waste paper.
Since the bands holding a bale of waste paper together are highly stressed when they are applied, it is hazardous for a worker to merely cut the band with a pair of wire cutters. In addition, once the bands have been cut, the waste paper tends to expand quickly, thereby making it difficult to retrieve the bands.
Another problem associated with debanding the waste paper bales is how to reduce the space occupied by the bands once they are removed and then placing the banding material into containers so that they too may be recycled.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and apparatus which can be used to safely remove the bands from waste paper bales while insuring that all of the bands are removed from the bale and that substantially all of the banding material is deposited in a convenient manner for a wire chopper to reduce the bands to small pieces of metal for storage in barrels. It is also desirable to have the waste paper bales debanded on a conveyor thereby allowing the waste paper bales to freely expand as they are introduced to the processing equipment.